Microsoft released Office 365 today as a subscription, cloud-based service that costs only a little over $8 per month.

Office 365 Home Premium costs $99.99 per year and features Word, Excel, Outlook, Access and Publisher. It also comes with 20GB of cloud storage in SkyDrive and 60 minutes of worldwide calling through Skype per month.

This version works with up to five desktops, tablets and laptops, and will receive automatic updates since it's cloud-based.

“Today’s launch of Office 365 Home Premium marks the next big step in Microsoft’s transformation to a devices and services business,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “This is so much more than just another release of Office. This is Office reinvented as a consumer cloud service with all the full-featured Office applications people know and love, together with impressive new cloud and social benefits.”

Microsoft also launched a few other versions of Office today, including Office 365 University, which is $79.99 for four years and up to two PCs or Macs, and offers all the same features as Office 365 Home Premium; Office Home and Student 2013, which is $139.99 for one PC and offers Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote without any Office 365 extras; Office Home and Business 2013, which is $219.99 for one PC and offers the same features as Office Home and Student 2013 (but includes Outlook), and Office Professional 2013, which is $399.99 for one PC that offers the same features as Office Home and Business 2013 but with Access and Publisher.

I bought Office 2003 back in 2004 which I don't remember the price but if you assume $139 which would come out to roughly $15/year or less $2/month. Which on my laptop, media shuttle computer, and android tablet. I have open office which costing me $0/year.

No matter what bells and whitepages you point to, it comes down to does product give the information to your internal/external customers in the manner you wanted.

I think it smart move by Microsoft to try and snarl people in college with a reasonable price, but in the end people look at what cost vs. value. That value is losing out to free open source options each day. Sure business will continue to buy it, but people rather use $8 for Amazon Prime video service or something else.

Don't forget you also get 20GB extra SkyDrive and 60 minutes per month of Skype world calling minutes per month. The nice part of the 365 is the free upgrades and ability to load the software on up to 5 devices. However the drawback is most people don't upgrade their Office packages that often, so you can save your self money by buying perpetual licensing.

There is also a Office 365 University for college or university students released with a $79.99 price tag for 4 years which seams to have the same functionality as the Office 365 Home Premium. This might be a better option than the perpetual licensed Home Student addition because of the skype calling and extra cloud storage. If the student looses or breaks their laptop they can still get to everything in the cloud.

Yes, $100/year vs $399 for Office professional. So 4years is the break even point. Are you going to upgrade your Office Professional license more or less than every 4 years?

Not to mention the extras you mentioned like Skydrive and Skype, along with the ability to install on 5 different computers which is something I don't believe the perpetual license Office Professional lets you do.

Seems like quite the value proposition over the Home & Student version, if you need access to the additional programs that aren't available in Home & Student.

I was merely correcting a mistake made in the article, not implying that Microsoft prices its products competitively.Now if you think a Lada and a Ferrari are the same thing, we have another problem... I cannot do serious work without excel and access. For that mather anything less than the latest powerpoint and publisher software will make me lose sales. For 8$ a month, the price of Netflix, i can afford it.